Breast cancer is still the most common cancer in women worldwide, as well as the primary cause of cancer-related mortality. (See e.g., Reference 1). Advances in mammographic screening, together with new treatment options, have resulted in a shift to earlier stages at initial diagnosis, and a reduction in breast cancer mortality. (See e.g., References 2 and 3). Nevertheless, according to the American Cancer Society, of the approximately over 230,000 women that will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in 2014, over 15% of them will die from the disease.
While some tumors can still be discovered by palpation, the majority of breast cancer diagnoses is made with X-ray mammography (see e.g., Reference 4), which can offer greater than 80% sensitivity. (See e.g., References 5 and 6). Still, over 20% of women with breast cancer have had a negative mammogram in the preceding year (see e.g., References 7 and 8), and the specificity can be as low as 20% (e.g., up to an 80% false positive rate). (See e.g., References 9 and 10). Furthermore, the use of mammography has significant difficulties in women with dense breasts (see e.g., Reference 11) and in distinguishing malignant from benign tumors. Therefore, there is a need to detect cancers that may be missed by mammography, and to improve specificity to reduce the number of unnecessary biopsies.
Improved sensitivity and specificity in breast cancer imaging can likely come from multimodal approaches combining structural and functional imaging technologies. Combining low-resolution functional imaging with high-resolution structural imaging in a spatially/temporally co-registered manner can provide a beneficial strategy: for example, utilizing the high-resolution structure images as a prior, the functional imaging modality could yield improved image quality and reduced artifacts (see e.g., References 13 and 15) to deliver more accurate representation of the functional status of tissue. At the same time, certain existing limitations of the structural imaging modalities can be overcome, or reduced, by adding complementary physiological information from the functional imaging modality. Co-registration of the two modalities can also facilitate interpretation of images and the extrapolation of findings from one modality to the other, as well as acceptance by the radiology community of new technologies. (See e.g., Reference 16).
Diffuse optical tomography (“DOT”) is an emerging technique that has evolved from transillumination and diaphanography. (See e.g., Reference 18). Facilitated by a preferable low-absorption window of tissue chromophores—e.g., oxy/deoxy-hemoglobin, water and lipids—in the near-infrared (“NIR”) range, modern photon detectors can capture NIR signals even after the light has propagated through many centimeters of human tissue, thus providing researchers with a valuable vehicle to probe tissue physiology and metabolism noninvasively. Using certain computer-assisted reconstruction techniques, the researchers can use optical measurements collected from an array of surface sources and detectors to recover tomographic images of deep tissue chromophore maps.
Thus, it may be beneficial to provide exemplary optical fiber probe arrangement for use with X-ray mammography, which can overcome at least some of the deficiencies described herein above.